Festival of Learning: 3–12 June 2025

Join us in June for two weeks of learning

Explore the Programme

Exclusive to London Funders' members, the Festival of Learning is an opportunity to share learning, lead discussions, provide challenge and be inspired by colleagues across the funding community

  • Strand 3: Building a Stronger Funding Ecosystem

    1 Sep 2026

    How do we create a funding ecosystem that is more connected, data-driven and collectively responsive to what communities need? This strand explored how funders can create a funding ecosystem that is more connected, data-driven and collectively responsive to what communities need. Across the sessions, discussions returned to a shared question: how can funding systems move away from paternalistic, fragmented and process-heavy models, and towards approaches that are more relational, equitable, coordinated and responsive to the realities of communities and civil society organisations?

    Read more

  • Strand 2: Community Wealth, Power and Place

    1 Sep 2026

    How do we build genuine community wealth and power in a new age of devolution? Across the UK, work to build community power and local wealth has been growing for many years — from resident-led, place-based programmes to community ownership, local enterprise and neighbourhood-level organising. That work is now gaining new momentum: strengthened community rights, expanding devolution reforms, and major investment programmes that are shifting how power and resources flow into places. This strand asked what it actually takes to move power, money and ownership toward communities, not just talk about it — and what that momentum demands of funders, in terms of how they invest, how they share power, and how they show up as long-term partners rather than short-term grant-makers.

    Read more

  • Strand 1: Justice, Solidarity and Social Cohesion

    1 Sep 2026

    What does it take to strengthen justice, solidarity and social cohesion at a time of rising division, economic uncertainty and declining trust? We are living through a period of deep economic uncertainty and falling trust in institutions, while movements that centre hate, disinformation and extremism are rising. Those carrying the heaviest cost of all this - racialised, disabled, migrant and low-income communities - are also disproportionately affected by economic and environmental pressure, while the services meant to support them are stretched thin. Against that backdrop, this strand asked what it actually takes, from funders and from the wider ecosystem they're part of, to strengthen justice, solidarity and social cohesion.

    Read more